When you use our Reports module to create email reports, you can pick a series of different KPIs like sent, delivered, opened, and clicked.
This article covers:
- Email KPIs
- Apple’s privacy update impact on the Reports module
- Differences Between your Reports and Agillic Reports
Email KPIs
If you want to recreate these KPIs in an external system like a BI system, based on an Activity Export, you can use the following description to help you set up the calculations.
Note that the communication statuses COMPLAINT and COMPLAINT_WITHDRAWN are only registered for email clients using the standard Abuse Reporting Format (ARF).
Name of KPI | Description | Communication Status in Activity Export |
Calculation
|
Sent | Number of attempted emails sent | SUCCESS | Count of SUCCESS + Count of ERROR |
Error | Number of emails which Agillic blocks from sending | ERROR | Count of ERROR |
Hard Bounced | Number of emails triggering hard bounce feedback. A hard bounce might occur because the domain name doesn't exist or because the recipient is unknown. | HARD_BOUNCE | Count of HARD_BOUNCE |
Soft Bounced | Soft bounce emails are recognized by the recipient's mail server but returned to the sender because the recipient's mailbox is full or the mail server is temporarily unavailable. | SOFT_BOUNCE | Count of SOFT_BOUNCE |
Delivered | Number of emails delivered which don't trigger a bounce feedback | Sent - (Error + Soft Bounced + Hard Bounced) = Delivered | |
Delivered (unique) | Number of emails sent to a unique recipient | Unique count of Delivered compared to UID | |
Opened (Total) | Number of opens of the email | READ_ACK | Count of READ_ACK |
Opened (Unique) | Number of recipients who open the email | Unique count of READ_ACK compared to UID | |
Open rate (%) | Percentage of recipients who open the email |
Opened / Delivered (Unique) * 100 = Open rate (%) Note: Can be affected by Apple's privacy update - read more below. |
|
Not Opened Unique |
Number of recipients who don't open the email |
Delivered / Opened (Unique) = Not Opened Unique | |
Total Clicks | Number of clicks in the email | EVENT | Count of EVENT |
Clicked (Unique) | Number of recipients who click in the email | Unique count of EVENT compared to UID | |
Click-to-Open Rate (%) | Percentage of recipients who click the email when opened |
Clicked (Unique) / Opened (Unique) * 100 = Click-to-Open Rate (%) Note: Can be affected by Apple's privacy update - read more below. |
|
Unique Clickthrough Rate (%) | Percentage of recipients who click the email when delivered |
Clicks (Unique) / Delivered * 100 = Unique Clickthrough Rate (%) |
|
Complaint | Number of recipients who mark the email as spam | COMPLAINT | Count of COMPLAINT |
Complaint Withdrawn | Number of recipients who unmark the email as spam | COMPLAINT_WITHDRAWN | Count of COMPLAINT_WITHDRAWN |
Unsubscribed | Number of recipients who unsubscribe from the email via their email browser | LIST_UNSUBSCRIBE | Count of LIST_UNSUBSCRIBE |
Note: 'Total Clicks' is not referred to as physical clicks but referred to as the number of events that get activated when a recipient clicks on e.g. a link or a button. This means that if you have two events attached to a link or a button and a recipient click once this will be registered as two total clicks.
Apple’s privacy update impact on the Reports module
In autumn 2021 Apple will introduce changes to the Mail application to increase users’ control over their privacy. You can read more about what is being updated and what it means here.
The update will impact the Reports module as emails will register as opened in Agillic regardless of whether the recipient opens them or not, as emails will be marked as read as soon as the inbox is loaded. Open rates will therefore increase, opposite will click rates decrease. Total and Unique clicks will stay the same.
Report Type Differences
Be mindful that Agillic calculates some report types differently:
- Table Report type: Only includes activity on the sent emails for the chosen time period.
- All other Report types: Includes all activity for the chosen time period, regardless of the delivery time of the email.
Differences Between your Reports and Agillic Reports
If you set up the calculations from the previous table, in some cases, you may still see minor differences in open and click-rates. These differences are usually due to one of the following cases:
Email is Sent Outside Reporting Period
When reporting on one or more emails, a reporting period is set. You may define this with a date-picker or simply with whatever data is in a specific Activity Export.
Because of this way of filtering, you may experience that certain emails are also sent before the reporting period, but some recipients are opening and clicking on the email within the reporting period.
Agillic filters out this data in the Reports module to avoid artificially high open or click-rates.
To prevent the same issues in your external reports, we recommend you look up any opens or clicks and link to the delivery of the same email to the same recipient within the reporting period.
Emails are Clicked But Never Opened
Since Agillic counts an open as loading the images in an email, it's technically possible to click an email without opening it. In this case, the Activity Export shows a timestamp for the click but no entry for an open. This is because Agillic can confirm the email was opened, but can't give a specific timestamp.
In Reports, the open data is automatically added for these clicks to ensure a click-rate can never be above 100%. To prevent the same issues in your external reports, we recommend you look up any clicks which don't also have an open and add an artificial open to ensure the open and that the click rate shows the correct result.
In order to correctly compare the unique opens from the reporter module with the activity export data the following formula can be used:
unique opens (reporter) = DISTINCT occurrence of (Recipient ID) {
unique READ_ACK (Communication Status) + unique EVENT (Communication Status)
}